Sustainable development footprint: a framework for assessing sustainable development risks and opportunities in time and space

This paper elaborates a framework, the sustainable development footprint, that can be used to assess progress in sustainable development in space and time. The framework views sustainability as consisting of the entire stock of its capital (natural and derived) and the rate of use of this stock to develop human (or other types) capital relative to the rates of regeneration of its capital stocks. The framework discusses three key forms of capital: economic, natural and human. The paper uses the framework to analyse variation in sustainable development status among 35 countries. The results show that sustainable development status, in particular its opportunities and risks, varies in relation to dynamics in economic, environmental and human capital. This framework provides a tool that nations, cities and other administrative units can use to evaluate their sustainability progress from time to time, in order to direct their resources and development in a manner that is supportive of the goals of sustainable development. The framework and illustration are potentially useful to decision makers and researchers making efforts to maximise the opportunities and minimise the risks as they advance sustainable development in international, national and local contexts.

Most popular related searches

Related articles

To achieve advanced watershed ecological management, policy-makers have struggled to predict ecological impacts for a long time. As a process of ecosystem analysis, ecological risk assessment (ERA) has been widely adopted to analyse the possibility of adverse ecological effects. ERA has developed from considering only a few indicators in an area to multiple sources and receptors in large-scope regions. However, the transfer of risk in large-scope regions caused by internal interaction has not been deeply analysed,...

Environmental risk assessment is a step towards identification, analysis, and classification of risk factors and thus reduction of the possibility of adverse consequences. In this research, a novel approach for environmental risk assessment on groundwater pollution is applied. By combination of aquifer vulnerability DRASTIC map, pollution severity and prioritizing of the plain regions by the TOPSIS method, more sensitive regions of Qazvin aquifer in Iran are identified. In the first step, seven hydro-geological...

In the paper the issue of failure risk assessment in water supply system (WSS) was presented. Problems of water supply network failure constitute a crucial issue in waterworks practice. The results of the analysis were obtained on the basis of real data from water network operation. Attention has been paid to the problem of risk assessment in the context of risk acceptance criteria. An example of criteria application was shown for the exemplary water supply network. The water network indicators: failure frequency,...

Disinfection by-products are compounds occurring in drinking water as a result of reactions between disinfectants and impurities in raw water, and their occurrence has been a public health concern for the last four decades. Haloacetic acids (HAAs) are one of the major by-products of chlorination. The concentration and variation of HAAs was monitored in 540 samples taken from tap water in six water and wastewater districts of Tehran, Iran. Seasonal variation indicated that natural organic matter and HAA levels...

Balancing water supply and demand—while addressing current and future vulnerabilities to extreme conditions such as drought—is essential to safeguarding the wellbeing of our communities.
Is your city at risk? Identifying where cities have problems and determining how much is at risk is the first step to becoming a strong, resilient city.
In states like California, water shortage is hardly a temporary problem, but there are very serious consequences that put local and state economies at risk. For...

Customer comments

No comments were found for Sustainable development footprint: a framework for assessing sustainable development risks and opportunities in time and space. Be the first to comment!

Add your comment

Great! comment successfully added!

Contact

Your message:

Your email

Your first name

Your last name

I would like to receive periodic email updates and special offers from select suppliers.